Blueberries, known for their delicate nature and susceptibility to moisture loss, present a unique challenge in the cold storage environment. Traditional methods for assessing water loss dynamics have often proven to be slow and laborious.

Firmness is one of the most critical quality attributes associated with this period, with water loss from the fruit being the most significant limitation for the fresh product market. One of the great challenges is to preserve the quality characteristics of the fruit in maritime shipments, which can take up to 60 days from the southern to the northern hemisphere. The random arrangement of each fruit within a container (different proportions of the peduncular scar and cuticular surface exposed to the environment) represents an essential source of variation in the prediction of softening during the storage period.

Academics from the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences of the University of Talca (UTALCA) designed a special device, referred to as a hanger for accelerated dehydration (DAD), to expose almost the entire surface of the fruit to the environment and determine the impact of factors such as Relative humidity and the role of the peduncular scar and cuticle in fruit water loss. The DAD offers a novel solution to this problem by streamlining the evaluation process, providing efficient and accurate measurements, and ultimately improving quality control protocols for blueberry preservation.

The DAD demonstrated satisfactory performance in evaluating the water loss dynamics of fruit during cold storage. However, fluctuations in relative humidity (RH) levels, particularly at lower RH (30%), were observed throughout the experiment, which affected the accuracy of the measurements. Maintaining RH near 96% was found to minimize water loss from fruit during storage, but this is difficult in commercial environments. Lower RH levels resulted in daily water loss, necessitating excessive compensation in commercial packaging to mitigate dehydration during storage and transportation.

The study highlighted the importance of separate fruit dehydration measurements, as variations in postharvest treatments and harvest dates significantly influenced water loss rates. For example, removing the waxy layer increased water loss, while sealing the stem scar or reduced it, which emphasized the role of these factors in regulating fruit dehydration. Additionally, harvest timing influenced the magnitude of differences in dehydration rates, with later harvests showing greater effects of postharvest treatments.

In general, the study concluded that the DAD constitutes a valuable tool to evaluate pre-harvest and post-harvest stimuli individually, thus improving predictions of the behavior of blueberries during long-term storage.